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"Podcast ecosystem's growth is exploding and I definitely should get on this train," interview with former M17 Group CEO Joseph Phua
At the end of January, former M17 Group CEO Joseph Phua's personal fund Turn Capital and Singapore-based investment firm Kollective Ventures buyout SoundOn, which is a Taiwanese podcast platform with a 35 million monthly download. This makes people wondering if Joseph, an entertainment industry veteran with over 12 years of experience, foresees some opportunities in the "Voice Economy"?
The Covid-19 pandemic severely impacted the economy around the world in 2020, and people started getting used to staying at home for a long time. On the bright side, this accelerates the people to adopt the digital economy.
The one obviously growing field is the podcast economy. According to Google Trend, the keyword "podcast" search volume surged 50% since February 2020. Taiwan leading audio equipment agent Cheng Seng Group indicate their products have 10 times year over year growth in early 2020, and Taiwan's most popular podcast channels Gooaye and Bailingguo also revealed that their advertising offer already increased 20 times.
Joseph felt that he should jump onboard this voice economy party.
"Actually, before contacting SoundOn founder LiKai Gu, I never seriously listened to any podcast, I even unfamiliar with the podcast ecosystem," Joseph admitted. When he started playing around, he got shocked that there were tons of new podcasts created every day. "This reminds me of 2016 live stream shows blooming, I strongly feel the wave is coming and I could not be left behind," Joseph said.
Joseph Phua, founded the mobile dating and networking app Paktor in 2013, which had instantly gained popularity across eight markets in Asia. Four years later, Paktor announced merging with Taiwan's live streaming platform, which had over 30 million users at that time called 17 Media, and established M17 Entertainment Group. Since then, M17 has expanded its business to Hong Kong and Japan. Additionally, two apps reached 22 million and 6 million global sign-ups, respectively in 2019.
Although podcasts are growing rigorously, people still wondering how to make a profit in this business? Joseph does not worry about this totally, actually, he already had a similar experience with how to transfer contents to the income. When he was Paktor CEO, he acquired the voice dating app Goodnight and came up with different profitability methods.
"No matter videos platform, news platform, or podcast platform, the common point is content, as long as the content is attracting, I don't think turning it to income will be a big problem. According to the data, the market scale relating to the content being created is over 10 billion dollars per year in Asia excluding China and Japan, and podcasts only take a little portion now. There is still a lot of potential," Joseph said firmly.
Furthermore, Joseph mentions that when SoundOn matures, it is realistic to copy the success to Japan and Southeast Asia markets. He gained this concept when he expanded M17 business to Hong Kong and Japan successfully.
"It is absolutely workable, after all, people are alike," said Joseph.
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